Heh.

LawDog

Well, Mom calls Dispatch and tells them that Nana is scheduled for surgery to drain the infection on Friday, Dispatch calls my supervisor, my supervisor — not knowing me just too well quite yet — solemnly and with great gravity takes me to a quiet place to give me the news that Nana was going into surgery.

Schmuck started out by telling me that the Department Chaplain was available if I felt the need — before telling me that Nana was simply heading for the OR. Scared the [deleted] out of me. I thought Nana had augered in on the table.

Anyhoo, Nana got down to the OR, the surgeon and his minion talked with her for a while, then everyone decided not to do surgery.

?!?

I hadn’t realized that it was an option.

They bunged Nana back upstairs, told the nurses that they changed their minds about surgery, and the nurses had a melt-down. Seems that Nana hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for the previous 12 hours, nor had she been given her meds.

The melt-down — in and of itself — was nothing but a testament to the dedication of the nursing staff.

How-some-ever, the nurse who called me to give me the news was still over-wrought from the melt-down, and simply left the following message on my voice-mail: “Your grandmother isn’t going to have surgery.”

Since the message was delivered in a voice still quivering from the melt-down, I immediately thought Nana was too far gone for surgery to help and I hauled butt for the hospital, mentally assembling A List Of Those Who Were Going To Be Very Sorry.

Imagine my state of mind when I button-hooked the door into her room and discovered an empty bed?

Promptly assuming the worst (what happens when we ASS-u-ME, students?), I trudged to the nurses station and shakily enquired as to the location of my grandmother.

Sayeth the nurse, “She isn’t in her room?”

I blink. Nurse trundles into Nana’s room, and yelps, “Oh, goddammit, Mildred’s gone again!”

Short search later, and Nana is discovered in the cafeteria — five floors down — noshing happily on roasted chicken with cajun rice and telling stories to a pack of enthralled cafeteria personnel.

*sigh*

The doctor says that Nana has two different bugs in the surgery site. However, he’s of the opinion that Nana is healthy enough to shake the infection with IV vancomycin, so that’s what we’re doing.

You know … sometimes I wonder what a normal life would be like.

LawDog

The article “Mediations on aftermath” was a quick stream-of-consciousness article that I penned just before going to bed. I really didn’t expect the widespread positive reaction that I got.

Interesting.

Let’s try to hit some of the comments to that article:

mr fixitsaid…

Thanks for the advice. One question; Being a LEO, how do you act toward a citizen when you are called to the scene of a shooting and he/she doesn’t want to talk to you? I don’t mean you personally, what is the average LEO gonna think?

The reaction of your average not-me-LEO is going to be based on a large number of factors, not the least of which being the geographical area of the United States that you’re in, the population density (Large city? Small town? Rural?), local attitudes towards self-defense and the experience of the officer in question — among other things.

I can tell you how I respond, but there really isn’t any way for me to predict the reactions of another officer.

Hammer said…

I’ve seen the yahoos on tx.guns TFL THR and the mighty chronicles of Ayoob pontificate about this subject. Your advice seems to be the most realistic and sensible I’ve read so far and thats no B.S.

Thank you.

Gay_Cynic said…

Thanks also…you know, now and again I wonder if you’ve learned to channel Cooper in your more serious moments.

I’ll never be anywhere near the wordsmith or warrior that Colonel Jeff Cooper was, but thanks.

WR Olsen said…

Great advice. May I have your persission to send your words to some instructors I know?

You’re welcome. As long as I am credited with my words, feel free to send them where you will.

It’s when I catch folks cut-and-pasting my work and claiming it as their own that I start getting peevish.

Anonymous said…

Mr. Dog that was a masterpiece. I wonder if a jury knows or is ever told of the mind bending efects of adrinaline? Anyway what would be the “prefered” method of someone answering the door? I mean you are responding to a shots fired call so should someone leave the door open or what?

In my experience, juries are seldom — if ever — told about the psychological and physiological effects involved in high-stress situations. When it is brought up, it’s usually by the defence attorney.

In this area — again, I can’t speak for others — the best way to answer your door after thumping a critter off this mortal coil is to be on the phone with the dispatcher when the cops show up. When you see the red-and-blues, tell her that and she should confirm that her officers are on scene. As soon — I say again my last — As Soon as you get that confirmation, tell her that you’re setting the phone down. Some folks will tell you to give her a description of yourself, and if you have the presence of mind to do that — all well and good.

Set the phone (still connected) and your weapon down, take several steps away from the phone/weapons, and wait for the officers to enter. I suggest waiting in a lighted area in a non-threatening stance, but it probably won’t be physically possible for you not to be bladed or on your toes. Please don’t make any fast moves.

Calico Jack said…

If you’d like to go into a little detail about the things that are likely to happen to the law abiding home owner after a shoot, it would be appreciated. Specifically, what if my attorney isn’t answering his phone at 3:00 AM? Am I going to spend the rest of the night in jail? If I am in jail, who should my family be talking to in order to find out where I am, especially if the police are trying to keep me hidden for a while.

I’m sorry to keep saying this, but there are really way too many variables for me to be guessing about the reactions of officers in other jurisdictions. I can tell you that the areas I’ve worked, unless there’s something really hinky about the whole shoot, you’re not going to be spending the night in jail. Again, do not take my rural point-of-view to be Gospel in, say, New York, Washington DC, Chicago or any other wretched hives of scum and villainy.

I can tell you that if you are arrested, you must be given the chance to make two completed phone calls within four hours of being booked. Always keep several phone numbers memorized. You would not believe how many folks get booked into my jail who get in front of the phone and realize that all their contact numbers are stored in their cell phone memory — which is sealed inside of a property bag, which will not be opened until release.

Anonymous said… A piece of advice from my attorney: have a good friend and/or neighbor, one who is level-headed and patient, to manage you while the adrenaline rush dies down and he (the attorney) drives to your house.

A good idea, and I have, on an occasion or two, had a minister meet me at the house. A minister has testimonial exemptions and privileges that Average Joe does not.

Be aware, however, I have also arrived at incident locations and ordered anyone who wasn’t a witness or a victim to unarse my crime scene and go home. Once the police show up, your friend or neighbor can be ordered away — and probably will be.

the Northwestern Diamondback of THR said…

Officer ‘Dawg, this is highly valuable advice. May we PDF it for release to the general self-defense community, or for coursework use?

Of course. As always, please credit me — or this blog, if you do.

martywd said…

Hopefully, HB 284 will be passed this year in the TX Legislature?

Too right, there. I would ask that any of my Gentle Readers who live in Texas kindly contact your legis-critters and noodge them into sending this one to the Governor.

DW said…

By the BY might I link to your site at Dragon Watch?

I’d be honoured. It may be sometime before I get a reciprocal link posted, though. I’ve got to bribe someone to talk to the Magic Elves on this thing.

If you posted a comment, but I didn’t answer it here, please don’t take offence. I read and treasure every comment.

LawDog

If you spend any time at all on the various gun forums of the World Wide Web sooner or later the conversation will come around to “What to do after a shoot”.

The advice given by anonymous figures riding the electron waves of the Internet can be … amusing. At best. At worst, some of the advice given will guarantee that the shooter will be hip-deep in legal trouble for the next lifetime.

I will tell you right up front that any comments made by your Humble Scribe are worth exactly what you paid for them.

First off — and I cannot stress this enough — anyone who carries, or owns, a gun or a knife needs to know a lawyer.

First thing tomorrow — or as early as possible — find yourself a lawyer who is familiar with self-defense cases and the weapons laws of your state.

Now, folks. Not at 0-dark-thirty with a critter bleeding out on your carpet and red-and-blue lightbars screaming down the road.

Ask the regulars at your gun range/club who they’d recommend. Use your NRA, GOA, JPFO, KABA, LEAA, or SAF membership services and find out if they can point you at an attorney in your area.

Once you have the name of an attorney, go talk to him (or her). It usually doesn’t cost much — or anything — to introduce yourself, sit in his office and talk about What May Come.

If you like him (or her), get a couple of his cards and put one in your wallet and another under the bedroom phone where you can find them after the bodies quit bouncing.

If you should find it necessary to help a critter into his next incarnation, hopefully you or a family member will have called 911 prior to the Grand Finale — so to speak — and the whole fandango will be recorded. However, if (for whatever reason) it was not possible to call 911 prior to the critter starting his trip to room temperature — please call 911 as soon as possible.

You will note that I don’t have any advice to give as to what you should tell 911 when you call them. Seems like everyone on the Internet has (legal) advice as to what you should tell the 911 operator, how you should say it, how many words to use and how many seconds to spend saying it.

In my experience, when your ears are ringing, the smell of powder and blood and various human secretions are clogging your nose, adrenaline is rampaging up-and-down your spine and a man — critter or not — that you just killed spent his last moments in this life in your presence begging God for another chance, or calling for his mother, or crying in denial and disbelief as he died …

… you are not going to be thinking of what your anonymous Internet buddy told you to say. You’re not even going to remember grabbing the phone, and if you are conscious of your conversation with the 911 people you have my admiration.

So. You have called 911. The very next thing you should do is pull out that lawyer’s card and call him (or her).

I don’t care how justifiable the killing was. I don’t care if you’re in Deepinahearta, Texas and the deceased is laying in the middle of your living room floor with an axe in one hand and a detailed murder list in the other.

Call your lawyer.

Like it or not, guns — and self-defense itself — are political. And District Attorneys are political animals. Trust me, you don’t want to be caught without a lawyer if Mike Nifong’s evil twin Skippy decides to make his political bones with your case.

You have called 911 and you have called your lawyer. Now — probably sooner rather than later — the scene is going to be crawling with cops.

Whatever you do, please, please, please do not greet the police while holding a pistol in your hand. Or a knife, bludgeon, broken bottle, chainsaw or whatever else you used to shove your critter in front of his Eternal Maker.

You, standing over a dead man, with a weapon in your paw when the cops show up is a recipe for an unpleasantness. Trust me on this one.

Again, there are thousands of folks on the Internet, each one with advice on what to do with your pistol, knife, or whathaveyou.

And — again — if you have the presence of mind to do something complicated with your gun, I salute you. But I doubt it.

Just remember not to have the weapon in your hand, on your body or with-in arms reach when you get face-to-face with the police. The officers are going to take custody of whatever you used to chlorinate the gene pool, and when they do — tell them where it is, but, please God, don’t go grab it yourself to give to them.

Last, but certainly not least, if there is any subject in which every-single-body on the Internet has advice for, it’s what to tell the cops about your shooting.

Folks, what you should or should not tell the cops is based completely upon the unique circumstances of your personal incident.

I can tell you that it’s never a Bad Thing to not make a statement to the police before your lawyer is present, but let’s talk Real Life here:

You have just ended the life of some mother’s child. You may have stared into the eyes of this person as the life drained out of them. You may have listened to the death rattle as they took their last breath. You may have heard this person’s last words, or you may have simply watched them kick until they were still.

Whichever, you have just breached the most sacred of Man’s taboos. You have done something that cannot be taken back, and you have done the single most powerful, awful thing one human being may do to another.

In addition, you’re going to be so jazzed on adrenaline that your teeth will hurt. Endorphins will mask any pain — and failing to find pain, they will be tweaking your inhibitions in 23 different directions. Your mind will have played tricks on you — sounds will have gone squirrelly; time will have done wierd things.

And worst of all, you probably won’t remember entire sequences of what just happened. Self-doubt is going to jump on your back like an 800-pound gorilla with cold feet and clammy hands.

And you will want someone — anyone — to understand that you were forced to do this terrible act. You will want someone — anyone — to know, to understand, that you had no choice in breaking the ancient taboo against killing.

Ladies and gentlemen, in the average self-defense shooting, it’s not getting the shooter to talk to us that’s hard — it’s getting him to shut up that’s difficult.

I can tell you to assert your right to have an attorney present during any interview with the police, but in the last 13 years of police work, I’ve never seen a justified Average Joe self-defense shooter who was capable of doing so.

Again, you may be different. I salute you if you are, but — again — I wouldn’t bet anything important that you won’t be like everyone else I’ve seen in that position.

So — my advice to you is to sit down with your attorney before the Fit Hits The Shan and discuss what your attorney wants you to do in that situation. Find out what your attorney wants you to tell the police, and try to stick with that.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself unable to stop talking, though. Prepare for it, and you will probably be able to limit any damage done.

LawDog

*sigh*

Nana came through her second hip surgery in fine fettle.

Of course, the first thing Nana did when she woke up from the surgery was extract her catheter.

There are several folks around here — your Humble Scribe included — that wince every single time she does that, but she is adamant that “civilized people” go to the litter box to do their business, and at 99 years of age who are we to argue?

Less amusing was her ripping the surgical drain out of the incision during a foggy moment. I’m here to tell you, walking into the room about the time that she took a firm grip on the tubing and yanked rates right up there on the Top Ten Nausea Inducing Moments of my little life.

Whoof.

Anyhoo, since this was the second break in less than six months, the doctor recommended that her physical therapy be at a full-time centre.

Believe it or not, the nursing centre here in Bugscuffle, Texas has a first-rate physical therapy department, so Nana has been staying at the nursing centre until the doctor figures they can’t do her any more good.

Last week we noticed that the surgery site on her left hip wasn’t matching what the surgery site on her right hip looked like. When we brought this up to the staff, they agreed that things weren’t quite matching up and that the facility witch-doctor had put Nana on a just-in-case dose of antibiotics.

Well, couple of night back, things cut loose. Literally (and metaphorically) speaking.

So. Nana is back in the Big Hospital on I.V. vancomycin while a whole bunch of folks in white coats scurry about trying to find out how deep the infection in my 99-year-old grandmothers’ left hip goes.

Damn it, if she’d’ve let the sodding drain alone, I’m willing to bet this’d not have happened.

*sigh*

She doesn’t seem to have any pain, but how the hell would we know if she was? Her appetite is still good — at least, she was systematically getting on the outside of a plate-full of roast chicken with new taters and baby carrots when I left, so I think that’s a Good Sign.

Ah, well. Family. You gotta love them, ’cause whacking them is against the law.

LawDog

I don’t watch police shows on the TeeVee, because I always wind up throwing things at the set. Most of the things that TeeVee cops do just flat give me a romping case of heartburn, and since I wind up shrieking stuff like, “Show me the Probable Cause!” during the wind-up phase of the object-flinging other folks in my household don’t watch crime shows, either.

Howsomever, during my illness, I was forced to watch TeeVee — which is one vast wasteland, I’m here to tell you — and as a result, I have become slightly addicted to the show CSI.

The one based in Las Vegas, not the other two — although the blonde lady in the Miami one really needs to immigrate to Las Vegas.

Where was I?

Oh, right. CSI.

It might be the drugs, but I actually wound up sitting through several CSI marathons on Spike.

I think the fact that CSI is really a science-fiction show with a loose connection to actual crime-solving is probably what allows me to watch it without launching various and sundries in the direction of the TeeVee.

If you really want to have a bit of fun, walk into your local crime lab with an eyelash inside a sandwich baggie, and tell the techs that you need DNA tests run on it.

Then, when they’re giving you the Olde Hairy Eyeball, mention that Grissom would have the results back before the end of the shift.

You will get your vocabulary expanded, trust me on this one. You might want to have your running shoes on, too.

Heh.

The reason that I can actually watch this show, is also one of the reason why the local prosecutors hate it so much.

There is something that they refer to as “CSI Syndrome” or “CSI Effect”: jurors expect to see the whole CSI dog-and-pony show during the trial.

Unfortunately, some of the CSI dog-and-pony show just ain’t so — but the jury doesn’t care. Jurors want to know why the cops didn’t test everything for DNA. They don’t want to hear about the six week wait for DNA results — if the lab isn’t backed up.

On CSI the science is infallible. In Real Life — not so much.

CSI techies have machines that can sniff an article of clothing and identify the name of the cologne on it. To the best of my knowledge there ain’t no such machine.

I’ve been told that in some areas, potential jurors are being asked if they watch CSI — and being excused if they do.

On the other paw, CSI seems to be responsible for a bumper crop of Eager Young Things wanting to get involved in the Crime Scene side of Law Enforcement — and that’s a Good Thing any way you look at it.

The show is fun to watch, too.

LawDog

In the time-hallowed spirit of the holiday, I now offer these resolutions that I intend to keep for the New Year:

Internal Affairs is a vital part of Modern Law Enforcement — therefore, I resolve to stop referring to the Internal Affairs officer as “Reichsfuhrer”, and I further resolve to stop telling the newbies that he has a shrine to Heinrich Himmler in his office.

Understanding that the Media can be a form of checks-and-balances, I resolve to stop shrieking like a little girl and running every time I see a news camera, holding up crosses and yelling “Back!” to reporters; and sending coupons for discount exorcisms to the local news stations.

I further resolve to stop bellowing cryptic phrases in the background while the dispatcher is telling reporters over the phone that, “Nothing interesting is going on” and I solemnly resolve to stop sending news-people to non-existent “Command Posts” during incidents in the field.

In the matter of the morale of my fellow officers, I hereby resolve to stop changing the department computer screensavers to read: “Sometimes, it’s the goats turn on top”, I will stop referring to the “Uniform Allowance Fund” as the “Lube Fund” and I further resolve to stop telling the newbies that they can recognize our department-issued sidearms by “The nibble marks on the business end of the slides.”

When it comes to superior officers, I resolve to stop grading new Department memos for grammar, spelling and punctuation — or at least to stop using a red pen to do so. Failing that, I resolve not to send the graded memo back to the issuing officer.

I also resolve to stop sending any officer of higher rank than a Lieutenant to an imaginary “Command Post” during incidents– see the resolutions for Media earlier.

I resolve to not use the phrases, “I’ll be in the sodding bell tower if anyone cares”; “I wonder if CNN will have special music for me?” or “The voices really don’t like you” around superior officers who may not have had time to get to know me yet.

Last, but not least — I resolve to use proper radio technique. I will no longer use “8-codes”, respond “5-2” instead of “10-4” when I only get half the message, and I will never, ever use the word “Duh!” for a response again.

Happy New Year!

LawDog